EXPLORING
"What do you say we explore the neighborhood?" Wig said.
"What do you say we put a block in front of the wheels?" I said. "Safety
first."
"This seems to be a kind of a walled city, like China," Connie said. "I
can see a kind of a shadow. Do you suppose that's the fence going all
the way around?"
"Sure it is," I told him; "all we have to do is shut those big gates and
the car will never get away. Only China isn't a city, if anybody should
ask you."
"What's the difference?" he said. "Nobody's likely to ask me."
"This is a very mysterious place," Westy said; "I, for one, would like
to know where we're at." That's just the nice way he talks. It's caused
by his bringing up.
I said, "Oh, dear me, _I for two_, would be delighted to ascertain."
"Where do you think we are?" he said.
"That's easy," I told them; "I know where we are."
"Where are we?" Wig wanted to know.
"We're here," I told him.
"Yes, but what is this?"
"It's a place, that's all I know," Connie piped up.
"Come on, let's wake up the kid," Wig said; "and take a stroll around.
It looks to me like a ball field or something like that. Anyway, those
are tents over there."
We didn't dare to start out without Pee-wee, so we shook him up and
dragged him up and down the aisle and played football with him, and at
last he let out a long groan and we knew we had him started.
"Wh-a-a-t--where--am I?" he yawned.
"We were just going to have a game of one o'cat with you," I told him;
"wake up, it's twenty years later; the peace treaty has just been
signed."
"Who signed it?" he gasped.
"I did," I said; "come on, get up."
If you can once get him on his feet, he usually stays up. I said,
"We're in a land of mystery; we've got Alice in Wonderland tearing her
hair from jealousy. I think we're in somebody's back yard."
"Where's the train?" he asked.
"It went down the street to get a soda," I said.
That opened his eyes all right. "Can you get sodas around here?" he
shouted.
We got hold of a chunk of wood and blocked one of the car wheels and
then started out. We couldn't see very well in the dark, but we made out
that the high fence went all the way around a great big flat field.
There was a kind of a wide road around near the fence. The tracks ran
right up under that building that we had seen ahead of us, into a kind
of a tunnel. We saw it was an ice-house, and I guess ice was loaded onto
cars there.
The two white things that we had seen were tents and there was a light
in one of them, but we didn't go in. There were little buildings around,
but they were closed up. There was a kind of a big platform with a
railing around it. In another place there was a long shed full of cows.
There were kind of things like mess boards all around, only some of them
were too high for mess boards.
"I give it up," I said
"It's a cross between a barn-yard and a picnic ground," Connie said.
Westy said, "I think it's an aviation field."
"Sure," I told him; "how stupid of me. And the cows are aviators."
"What do you say we follow the fence around?" Westy said.
"What do you say we don't?" I said. "Come on, let's go back and I'll
cook some fritters and then we'll get our suits off and have a good
sleep, and to-morrow we'll see what we see."
We were all pretty sleepy, so we decided to do that. If we had taken a
little hike all the way around near the fence, the terrible thing that I
am going to tell you about now, would never have happened. You had
better get ready for it, because it's one of the most terrible things
that I ever told. When you hear about it, you'll turn cold and your hair
will stand up. Even now whenever I think about it, I just shake. That's
the word--_shake_.
Yah, hah! You thought I was going to tell it in this chapter, didn't
you?